Jan. 26, 2013

Deb Whitcraft stands in the New Jersey Maritime Museum, Beach Haven, in this 2011 file photo. Her museum received a $15,000 grant from the Robin Hood Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund that will enable to start serving soup there again. / NJ PRESS MEDIA

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@dracioppi

Musicians Bruce Springsteen (left) and Jon Bon Jovi perform at the '12-12-12' Madison Square Garden concert in New York City benefiting The Robin Hood Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund. The fund distributed $9.6 million in aid to local groups Friday. / Getty Images for Clear Channel

AREA RECIPIENTS

In Monmouth and Ocean counties, 18 organizations will receive grants ranging from $10,000 to $500,000 from the Robin Hood Hurricane Sandy Relief Funds.

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The soup is returning to Long Beach Island, and so is Deb Whitcraft’s sanity.

Whitcraft is the founder, president and curator of the New Jersey Maritime Museum in Beach Haven, and for more than 20 years she has prepared and served soups of all kinds — from 16-bean to split-pea — from the sprawling museum’s seafoam-green lower level.

Superstorm Sandy washed out that lower level and swept away her commercial storage freezers and hundreds of containers of soup, she said. The soup-making was Whitcraft’s therapy, she said, but the kitchen has been closed since the Oct. 29 storm.

But Whitcraft was buoyant on Friday, a day after she learned that her operation was chosen — among 70 others in New York and New Jersey — to receive funding from the Robin Hood Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund. The relief committee publicly announced on Friday that, in its second round of funding, it will hand out $9.6 million in grants to organizations in New York and New Jersey, including several in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

Whitcraft’s homespun operation will receive $15,000, allowing her to purchase a pair of new 49-cubic-foot freezers and a host of ingredients: dried beans, ham hocks, chuck meat, split peas and some others she is keeping classified.

“That is the only good news I have had in the last 90 days,” Whitcraft, who is also a volunteer EMT and a former mayor of Beach Haven, said of the Robin Hood announcement. “That’s a good start. My soup kitchen is back in action.”

The money will help kick-start other local rebuilding projects and feed into existing programs dedicated to Sandy relief.

Brookdale Community College, for example, will be able to help finance student recovery through its disaster relief fund. The Brookdale foundation has already distributed about $14,000 of the $15,000 it had raised after Sandy to about 65 students of the Middletown school, said Timothy P. Zeiss, the foundation’s executive director.

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Robin Hood is granting an additional $125,000, which will be distributed, in cash, to between 250 and 300 students who were affected by the storm, according to a statement from the foundation. This eases the burden of students who have lost transportation, income and supplies but want to continue their education, Zeiss said.

Overall, housing organizations will receive the largest chunk of the $9.6 million, with nearly $5.3 million earmarked for housing-related projects and programs. That includes $500,000 for Jersey Shore United, formed by The Church of Grace and Peace in Toms River, and $65,000 for Family Promise of Monmouth County.

Family Promise Executive Director Tracy Boyer said the money will pay staff for up to six months to run the organization’s New Beginnings outreach case-management program. The program helps provide money for security deposits and gift cards for displaced families, she said. The program was started last week without the funding, so this week’s announcement lifted a fiscal weight from the organization, Boyer said.

Mental health services is scheduled to receive $585,000, with more than half of that flowing into Monmouth and Ocean counties, according to Robin Hood. Preferred Behavioral Health of New Jersey, in Lakewood, will receive $180,000 and CPC Behavioral Healthcare, based in Middletown, will receive $140,000. The money will support the organizations opening up additional counseling centers in Sandy-affected areas.

This affords higher visibility in an anticipated time of need for mental health help, said Vera Sansone, executive director of CPC Behavioral Healthcare.

“We have waiting lists from here to eternity,” she said. “We can give this counseling free, and (normally) we really can’t afford to do that. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Since Sandy, the Robin Hood foundation has raised about $65 million for Sandy relief, spokeswoman Patty Smith said. The 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief at New York’s Madison Square Garden brought in about $50 million, she said.

With Friday’s round of grants, the foundation has distributed, or has plans to distribute, about $29.8 million. The goal is to put 95 percent of all the money in communities by March 31, Smith said.

As soon as Whitcraft receives her grant, she is going to order those freezers and the ingredients. The soup pots will be on shortly after, she said.

“It keeps me sane. Well, it keeps me half-sane, and at the same time it keeps their stomachs full,” Whitcraft said. “I can’t wait.”